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I was caked in an unknown quantity of sand, dirt, sunscreen, deet, and sweat. Every time I splashed water on my face, a brownish liquid ran off. As I looked in the mirror, my skin appeared darker by a few shades, with a reddish tinge. I had little doubt that I was developing a burn. Bug bites occupied nearly every part of my body — from head to toe. Three days in the Great Sand Dunes National Park had turned me into a mountain man with overgrown scruff. I was ready to try out to become the next Brawny man.

In this beautiful, alien landscape, I sat crosslegged with a book, ran through the sand, and generally paused to reflect. Life’s busyness faded momentarily, and the only nerves present centered on lightening and bears. These were real threats — everything else was illusory.

With my brother along for the ride, we entered the park with some essentials. There was the two-person tent, camp stove, water, food, matches, and our books. The agenda was two-fold: relax and adventure. I’m proud to say we succeeded on both accounts. We took a long night hike amidst the sand dunes, and relished in the opportunity to read along the river.

As I reflected on the trip, I couldn’t help noticing the takeaway: living simply is restorative.

Many consider camping to be rejuvenating, as people can reconnect with the world. But how can that be if we were missing many of our creature comforts? Heck, my brother and I practically slept on gravel! If we can somehow make do without superfluous items while camping for few days, why do we suddenly need them when we get home?

In regular society, surrounded by others, it’s hard to resist indulging. We buy the shirt that’ll be a “tremendous” addition to our wardrobes. We fantasize about the cars and homes we’ll buy and live in. We eat at the classy restaurant. We dream of contentment that we might have with just one more purchase.

Ironically, the beauty we experienced was because none of these options existed. The campground is magnificent because it’s void of the trappings of mainstream society. There aren’t any big screen TVs, billboards marketing unnecessary products, or commercials penetrating this isolated area. Most of the time, the park is immaculately cleaned and people tend to respect each other. There isn’t a discontent cultivated to encourage spending. They live by a “pack it in, pack it out” mentality. Competition is non-existent here. Everyone’s just trying to take it easy and slow down.

Back in the “real world,” people fight to change lanes — cutting each other off, jump over other shoppers for Black Friday deals, and amass gigantic McMansions with stuff in every nook and cranny.

After spending a few days in this separated world, part of me struggled to return. The essentials are simple: shelter, food, and water. And yet, we fight to make more, buy more, and sell more. Maybe there’s a happy medium, but as I returned home there was a culture shock. I wanted to stay, but obviously couldn’t.

Fortunately, the simple life needn’t end when the busy, city streets come into view. I needn’t regress to this unlearned state. As I transition back to society, I cannot help but wonder what camping taught me about living simply and minimally.

1. Pack light

Pretty simple right? When camping, you can’t bring or carry everything. The solution is to pack light. Get the tent you need, not the bigger one you might want. Don’t be afraid to wear the same thing day after day. In life, packing light means only bringing, buying, and holding on to that which sustains life.

2. Pack it in, pack it out

Whenever people go camping, they should pack up all the trash and mess they make and throw it away appropriately. Camping ethics says that you should leave a place better than you left it. If you brought disposable plates, bring them out of the park. Don’t pollute and litter amidst this beautiful place. Back in society, this helps remind me of my impact on the world around me. We can’t take our purchases into the afterlife. What we buy has a lasting consequence to the environment.

3. Seek out adventure in moments, not things

Nothing is better than free. Although there’s a nominal entrance fee, national parks make this lesson easy. Hours, days, and weeks can be spent exploring and learning. But that fun, adventurous spirit doesn’t need to stop when leaving the park. There are moments everywhere to look, go, and discover — it’s all about the attitude. When I first moved to Iowa, I struggled to occupy my time and spent more money trying to create fun. The best decision I made was to buy a bike and ride everywhere. There’s adventure out there, and money shouldn’t be the necessary variable.

4. Find ways to relax and reflect

There are always moments when camping where the wind blows through my hair and I breathe easy. My brain seems to take a pause, and everyday concerns evaporate. Relaxation is essential to a long life; even more, to creativity. It was on a drive to Burning Man that Elon Musk brainstormed the idea of creating a solar energy company with his cousin. And it was in music that Albert Einstein manipulated complicated physical concepts in his mind. Relaxation is only evil in a corporate world that asks its workers to do the same motion over and over again; there, creativity is shunned. Camping is a reminder that relaxation helps cultivate a diverse, capable mind. Whether in the wilderness or weirdness of home, relaxation and reflection are vital.

5. Respect the environment, each other

Camping in national park changes your appreciation of the environment. The research has repeatedly shown that when people connect with the outdoors, they learn to respect the world around them. When people go out into the wild, a togetherness is cultivated. By staying in a small, two-person tent with little room for more than a book, light, and sleeping bags, it was impossible to ignore the world around the camp site. Bad weather shook and stirred the tent. Rain pelted the lining and attempted to enter the tent. Quickly, I learned to appreciate the weather as the natural state that we must respect. The world has been around for billions of years before us, and is a powerful keeper. But we also must respect and take care of it in return.

Our daily lives offer up countless opportunities to consume more than we need, at great cost to our environment. If we focus on the essentials over the extraneous, we will greatly slow our contributions to climate change.

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The world currently exists in an infinite growth paradigm — an impossibility that will lead to the planet’s destruction if not curtailed — where increased production and consumption are desired. A pressure to work, spend, and consumptively “contribute” can come from both internal and external sources. This environment makes frugality challenging.

Individually, I struggle to save money, eat out less, and make healthy financial choices. It’s easy to pull out excuses: I’m tired, stressed, or too busy. This monologue pushes me to spend on items that should make me feel relaxed and content. They don’t. My precarious budget necessitates and encourages an alternative. Moreover, I’m motivated to reduce my environmental impact due to climate change. To consume is human (i.e., food), but to buy endlessly and without reason is disastrous. But I can’t say it’s easy, as I must be continually mindful of my spending. Mistakes happen when I’m not actively working at it. Last weekend I spent about $35 going out for food and drinks, in a moment of total unconscious spending.

Along with this self-promulgated racket, there are also social pressures that encourage spending. Society has certain expectations about wealth and success. Usually, achievement in the eyes of our capitalist system requires a paycheck of about $50,000 or more — with continual raises and bonuses. Income must also be spent conspicuously. In other words, you should find ways to spend on things that provide no material value — they just occupy space (i.e., larger cars, homes, and the crap to fill them).

If you aren’t making these purchases there can be a social reaction or rejection. This is where frugality gets messy. For instance, I tried a dating site that asked whether I owned a car. The question seemed innocuous enough, but upon further inspection I realized it was aimed at attractiveness. See, asking whether I had a car was meant to give information to potential women. They would be asked the same thing, but I could see many women’s profiles needed the man to have a car. It made me feel bad. Not having a car made me less attractive; an obvious societal pressure, which still felt unexpectedly horrible. I clearly wasn’t meeting the expectations of those on the site. I wished I owned a car momentarily.

It’s not just cars. Look at the phone in your pocket. If you’re a millennial, it’s likely a smartphone — mine is! When you see someone pull out a flip phone or a “brick,” you may judge that person’s income level and status — I have. But is that fair, right, or healthy?

The greatest challenge to my frugality has come from those who verbally question my decisions (fortunately, none of my friends 🙂 ). For example, there are people who tell me I’m not frugal enough or could/should be doing better. Essentially, they’re saying, “You’re trying to be frugal, but you haven’t met my expectations. If you really want to be frugal, you’d do this…” The other critique I receive is that my frugality hurts the economy. By reducing my consumption, I’m somehow not doing my part. When I more accurately reflect on these situations, I realize that something about my goals are creating a reactionary defensiveness in some people.

I’ve found that my method of talking about frugality and saving money greatly affects how safe others feel about their own choices. A spendthrift may inherently be insulted and/or self-conscious by my choices. What they don’t realize is that their social pressures (or critiques) can act on a healthy budget to encourage conformity and consumption.

Becoming more frugal isn’t without challenges — both internal and external. The frugal life isn’t always easy, but it certainly feels rewarding when done right.

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It’s time to destroy the 40-hour workweek. Photo: Joe Loong/Flickr

Our American economy needs you to work nothing less than 40 hours per week. The message is simple: earn more, collect belongings, and don’t stop until you retire/die. Unless you meet this expectation, be prepared to be called lazy and unproductive — stuck in the unfortunate world of lower and middle incomes. And if you’re not doing something that makes more money than your neighbor, you ought to think about changing careers.

McMansions, vehicles, and stores grow. In turn, our consumption escalates. We need more to fill our bigger homes; otherwise, they feel empty. Meanwhile, our wallets are stripped and we maintain this cycle of work and near poverty — just getting by. Despite going through a horrific “great recession” over the last few years, companies have continued to report record revenue and profits. The business world is clearly benefiting from our workweek and continued spend.

This current system is predicated on infinite growth. If you’re not continually benefiting from pay raises and getting promoted, you’re not doing it right. Since the Industrial Revolution, we haven’t stopped to seriously question what we’ve created and amassed. Like worker zombies, it’s hard not to see the countless hours we put into companies — all so that we reach financial independence.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the steel boom. Clouds of ash engulfed the city continually.

Unfortunately, infinite growth has two awful consequences: unstable population and climate change. The world population was about 300 million in 1000 AD. The Industrial Revolution sparked atmospheric population increases. Now, the U.S. alone has around 300 million citizens. There are over 7 billion people on the planet, and that number is rapidly increasing.

As we developed more efficient means to produce and manufacture goods, fossil fuel use increased and never stopped. The delicate balance of carbon dioxide in the air shifted and it devastated our climate. We are suffering from an inescapable greenhouse gas effect where the temperature of Earth rises and natural disasters worsen. Even when faced with this dire news, we make a societal shrug and continue to pump out record amounts of oil and coal to feed growth.

The market demands this. If you watch the stock market, you’ll see investors and institutions pressure companies for constant revenue growth. Stagnation is likened to the death of a company — maintenance isn’t enough. We have a myopic economic policy of long-term instability for short-term riches. Profits over people is a rewarded mantra on Wall Street, and it leads to absurd business practices that hurt their employees and our environment further.

We live in a world where the Koch brothers are lobbying to tax alternative energy sources, Microsoft stock (MSFT) increases when they announce thousands in job cuts, and corporate executives are paid, on average, 350-to-1 for regular employees. Incontrovertible evidence suggests that we are causing irreparable harm to our environment, while we maintain this status quo.

It’s time to break out of this cyclical destruction. We need to find another method to contribute to society in a positive manner — one that doesn’t cause harm to future generations and massive environmental diaspora.

“The eight-hour workday developed during the industrial revolution in Britain in the 19th century, as a respite for factory workers who were being exploited with 14- or 16-hour workdays.

As technologies and methods advanced, workers in all industries became able to produce much more value in a shorter amount of time. You’d think this would lead to shorter workdays.

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.”

“Municipal staff in Gothenburg will act as guinea pigs in a proposed push for six-hour workdays with full pay, with hopes that it will cut down on sick leave, boost efficiency, and ultimately save Sweden money.”

See, the Swedes understand that by cutting back, their employees will be more productive with their time and suffer from less burnout.Even in capitalistic America, the founders of Google are beginning to advocate for reductions in our workweek. In the following video, the tech titans are advocating for this change for a more productive future.

There’s a tragic irony about this whole problem: we developed technologies, vehicles, and our massive global economy to increase productivity. But who’s really benefited from these changes except a select few? Most workers are working more than ever, despite record productivity and profitability. We haven’t invented and invested in a technology that truly eased our workweeks.

The system is broken and skewed. We have an opportunity to respect our fellow humans and environment — for generations to come. Perhaps it’s time to shift forward, and evolve towards empathy and positive economic models. Perhaps it’s time to emphasize healthy companies over exorbitant profits. Infinite growth is not sustainable on a planet with finite resources. Let’s throwaway these antiquated economic ideals.

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The price we pay at the pump is inaccurate

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about what might happen if gas were to spike to $10 per gallon. The comments and tweets were enlightening. Nobody wants this to happen, and the consequences could be drastic to our still-fragile economy. Today, I wanted to focus on a different angle: the hidden price we pay for burning fossil fuels (aka, oil).

The national average gas price sits at $3.67 per gallon. Most of that consumer cost goes to a massive supply chains of drillers, explorers, refiners, transporters, commodities exchanges, and storefronts. It supports their bottom line. This process of getting oil from the ground into a refined fuel source is an elegant dance. Without every component working in harmony, we wouldn’t be able to fill up our cars.

Where our current fuel taxes go

In America, our price per gallon includes about 50 cents for state and federal taxes. Of that 50 cents, about 18-20 cents per gallon is directly funneled to the federal government as an excise tax. Essentially, an excise tax is an adjustment and penalty for greater contribution of damage. For instance, if you drive more, shouldn’t you have to pay more to maintain the roads? Most people understand the need for this tax; without it, we wouldn’t have this infrastructure.

Photo: flickr/senorcodo

Like all things political, the funds get redirected to all sorts of “special” programs. About 60% of federal funds go directly to road and bridge building. The other 40% seems to be sent to local municipalities for the purposes of pet projects, which may include (but is not limited to) roads.

There are museums that are being built with that money, bike paths, trails, repairing lighthouses. Those are some of the kind of things that that money is being spent on, as opposed to our infrastructure.
–Former Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters (Link)

What’s happening here is that federal funds are being redirected back to districts after Congress gets their hold on the excise tax. Instead of spending on the federal level with federal funds, earmarks eat away at the excise tax. Ironically, senators and congressman already see a benefit via state gas taxes. The federal redirection of funds is just an added bonus. An estimated 30 cents per gallon is fed back to the state (e.g., Iowa) for the purposes of:

State highways maintained by the Iowa DOT are financed with funds that are principally derived from vehicle fuel taxes and registration fees collected and allocated by the state and federal governments.
–Iowa DOT (Link)

Both state and federal taxes for fuel directly charge corporations and individuals for their use. I bet you and I could both use the extra 50 cents per gallon that we’re paying in taxes, but it would not properly contribute to the maintenance and security of our infrastructure. Albeit, we could probably do without the earmarks for special interest projects in local municipalities.

Our tax code is missing an essential element: Carbon

Unfortunately, the current tax regime doesn’t account for other, indirect negative externalities that are involved with burning fossil fuels. Many developed nations attempt to account for these indirect damages.

Norway is a major oil producing country, but the average Norwegian has to shell out $9.97 for a gallon of gas, more than twice the U.S. average. Norway doesn’t subsidize fuel at the pump; instead, it uses oil profits to fund free college education and infrastructure development. (Link)

In Norway, steep gas prices are primarily due to two taxes: road and CO2 taxes. After that, the revenue generated goes to support free education in Norway — creating a highly-educated populace that can intelligently vote and participate in democracy. These are some of the positive parts in expensive taxes.

But there also more nefarious company practices that could be accounted for by taxes. For instance, while BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico has cost the company around $13 billion, the environmental devastation and future wildlife concerns are still unknown. A carbon tax could account for this damage, too. The threat of terrorism and instability in global markets forces companies to explore and drill in safer zones that are further from developed areas. But safety has a cost, as transporting, leaks, spills, and CO2 emissions in the pumping process is already tremendously expensive.

America subsidizes heavy oil use, at the detriment of long-term stability considering major environmental impacts (i.e., climate change). This policy stands in direct contrast to many European countries that prioritize the environment and recognize the painful consequences that are soon to occur if we don’t change course. Further gas taxes alone would likely reduce consumption and begin to correct our course towards a more environmentally friendly economy.

What should we do now

The leading argument against additional taxation (primarily carbon taxes) is because the economy could suffer. By placing a uniform tax on the fossil fuel use that’s contributing to climate change, a difficult consequence may occur: business may slow. Critics point out that the economic ramifications for increasing the excise tax and introducing a CO2 emissions tax are dangerous – they affect average Americans and vulnerable small businesses.

…higher prices would consume a greater share of income for low-income households than for higher-income households, because low-income households generally spend a larger percentage of their income on emission-intensive goods. Similarly, workers and investors in emission-intensive industries, who would see the largest decrease in demand for their products, would be likely to bear relatively large burdens as the economy adjusted to the tax. (Link)

Most of the evidence suggests that if we ignore the signs and continue our current fossil-fuel driven life, we’re in trouble, but the solution is murky. Our current paradigm is to burn and travel as fast and frequent as possible to deliver goods with efficiency and at a low-cost to consumers. Tweaking this simple equation may provide long-term benefit to our environment and future as humans, while hurting individuals in the short-term. More importantly, lower-income populations would be at particular risk to these changes.

We’re at a fork in the road as a country and world:

Should we do anything about climate change?

Should we admit that our consumerism contributes to spiking CO2 rates?

What happens if we don’t act now?

Unlike apocalyptic predictions from moneyed interests, a carbon tax likely wouldn’t decimate the US economy. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which acts as a non-partisan group for Congresses budgets, says this:

For example, in 2011, CBO estimated that a cap-and-trade program that would have set a price of $20 in 2012 to emit a ton of CO2 (and increased that price by 5.6 percent each year thereafter) would raise a total of nearly $1.2 trillion during its first decade. In addition, total U.S. emissions of CO2 would be about 8 percent lower over that period than they would be without the policy, CBO estimated. (Link)

Production costs would increase and possibly affect the total output; moreover, the prices paid at the supermarket would likely increase. All forms of consumption would decrease, and as the CBO statistics suggest, an 8 percent decrease in emissions would be witnessed.

Like much of Europe, where you are likely paying double what you pay in America for gas, fossil fuel use is reduced. The cost is burdensome — in a good way. We need to begin exploring alternative energies and production paradigms that don’t tax our environment as much. In the mean time, we need to start taxing fuel at higher rates and redirect some funds to lower-income families as a fuel credit (essentially, becoming an upper-middle, high income, business tax).

Below is a video from Apple. They’ve recently been featured by Greenpeace for their all alternative energy power sources for data centers. While companies can and will adjust — innovating for the future — we should make this shift economically advantageous, while punishing the polluters.